Comparative literature note: this 1968 book bears similarities to Junichiro Tanizaki's "the Key," written in 1956 but not translated into English until 2004. (Many people say "Hunger Games" also has a Japanese precedent, but I digress...)

he captures the art student Miranda and keeps her in the cellar of the large house where he patiently waits for the barriers of class and taste to break down in the limbo of their isolation. She, the creator, desperate for her freedom, tries to understand but cannot banish her contempt for everything anti-life that the collector stands for

Part of John Fowles' "exile 3," the three great books he wrote while spending two years on a greek island being a teacher, surrounded by "acidic blue seas and skies" (acidee?)

Informs "the Magus;" as the Magus is about a well-off, good looking, debonair Oxford grad and his ennui forced to confront layers of meaning; this is the "black" to Magus's white protagonist; the stuffed up, repressed, lower-class, unhappy stalker... and what ensues

Magus includes an upper class English boy and a working class Aussie girl; Collector is lower class boy and upper class girl...

can be described as follows: meditation on nature of obsessive love (extended allegory on a repressive marriage?); meditation on class; early "psycho-thriller;" meditation on male-female relationships before 1960s sexual revolution. or is this about England and her colonies?? as with all great books, multiple readings possible...

apprently, like [Book: Catcher in the Rye], this is a serial-killer book-- i.e., one of those books serial killers like